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The story I read said Yeardley Smith had predicted it would be five years or so until a film gets made -- the TV series is contracted to run for another two years, and then that would be followed by three years of movie-quality animation on the movie.

The long anticipated movie version of The Simpsons has been put off until at least 2008 because those connected with the TV show don't want work on the movie to affect it, exec producer Al Jean has told Entertainment Weekly. "The biggest thing is you don't want to do a movie that's not reflective of the quality of the show, and you don't want the quality of the show to slip because you're doing the movie. So we're taking a little time," Jean said.

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Interests:Since I'm here, that should be pretty obvious. I spend countless hours on the Web looking up music and movie news and info. When I'm not doing that, I spend countless hours writing music and movie reviews for my website.

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Perhaps in that scene Marge is reminded of the admonition by God to bury our human waste properly in Deuteronomy 23:12-14

12 Designate a place outside the camp where you can go to relieve yourself. 13 As part of your equipment have something to dig with, and when you relieve yourself, dig a hole and cover up your excrement. 14 For the LORD your God moves about in your camp to protect you and to deliver your enemies to you. Your camp must be holy, so that he will not see among you anything indecent and turn away from you.

Denny

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BROOKS: First of all, what we're calling secrecy is just keeping the work private until you're ready to show it. But it started out as people wanting to know what it was about, and then we were having fun with it, putting out false story lines. We've revealed more with each successive trailer. We'll continue to do that.

GROENING: Even though there are some very misleading things in the trailer.

BROOKS: We saw a trailer the other day, and somebody said 70 percent of the things in it -- based on where we were eight weeks ago -- are no longer in the movie, because we keep on fooling around.

Over the weekend, 7-Eleven Inc. turned a dozen stores into Kwik-E-Marts, the fictional convenience stores of "The Simpsons" fame, in the latest example of marketers making life imitate art. Those stores and most of the 6,000-plus other 7-Elevens in North America will sell items that until now existed only on television: Buzz Cola, KrustyO's cereal and Squishees, the slushy drink knockoff of Slurpees. . . . For 20th Century Fox Film Corp. and Homer's creators at Gracie Films, the stunt is a cheap way to call attention to their movie, since 7-Eleven is bearing all the costs, which executives of the retail chain put at somewhere in the single millions. At 7-Eleven, they're hoping it shows the ubiquitous chain has a trait seen in few corporations -- the ability to laugh at themselves. . . .

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I received my press invite in the mail last night -- a little unusual, as most screening invites I receive come in the e-mail first, and maybe in the U.S. Mail a couple of days later.

Anyway, the only scheduled screening so far is ... Thursday night, July 26. That'll probably be "opening night" for all I know, with the critics possibly seeing the film with paying audiences. That happened earlier this summer.

The only reason I care about this is because I was assigned to review the movie, but the late screening jeapordizes that. Were there an earlier daytime screening for those who don't work elsewhere from 9 to 5, Crosswalk could have another critic review it. But that doesn't appear to be the case in D.C. Not yet.

Has anyone else received word of "Simpsons" movie screenings in their markets? I suspect that the night-before-opening applies elsewhere, but I'd like confirmation.

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: Anyway, the only scheduled screening so far is ... Thursday night, July 26.

FOX STRIKES AGAIN!!!

Seriously, this is the same studio that refused to show Pathfinder AT ALL in most cities (even cancelling press screenings in Vancouver, where it was filmed, and in Chicago, etc.), and then held preview screenings for Fantastic Four 2 and Die Hard 4 the night before the movies opened (i.e. only a few hours before the midnight screenings and/or matinees were open to the public). I had been wondering if they would pull the same stunt with this film. Looks like they will!

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Some critics won't get a look at "The Simpsons Movie" until three days before it opens nationally, a strategy Twentieth Century Fox is using to preserve the film's plot from Internet pirates and scoop-hungry movie bloggers.

The film, which "Simpsons" fans have awaited for years, is set to premiere in Westwood on July 24 with a wide release on July 27. Fox is hosting screenings for most critics and reporters on July 24, 25 and 26.

The late screening has prompted speculation that "The Simpsons Movie" isn't all that its gargantuan marketing campaign has promised. A Fox spokeswoman denied those rumors Thursday.

"Anybody who's needed to see the film has already seen it," said the spokeswoman, who asked that her name not be used. "We're not concerned about audience response to the film. The audience response has been overwhelming." . . .

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Jeffrey Wells lets me know that when I do see this movie, the night before its official Friday opening, I won't be allowed to bring anyone to the screening:

Another indication of Fox's extremely guarded screening policy is their decision to screen The Simpsons Movie for onliners on Thursday, 7.26 -- the night before the nationwide opening. No other studio has done this to myknowledge -- they either don't screen dicey films or they screen them two or three days before opening. Fox also stipulatd that no plus-ones will be allowed to attend the 7.26 screening.

Fox's message is basically "we don't trust you and we really don't trust your friends." Obviously they don't want early reviews because it's the Wild West out there, etc., but the Simpsons brand skews older and smarter and could presumably benefit from early-ish reviews from the right people.

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I've added a few more links to the ongoing Fox-shoots-itself-in-the-foot saga at my blog, but now, mere minutes ago, comes word that there will be a DAYTIME press screening for this movie in Vancouver ... and it WON'T be on Thursday ... that's right, we Vancouver critics will apparently get at least one full day to process the film before the reviews go online. (I don't want to be more specific, lest that be spilling a secret or something -- it's so hard to tell with Fox these days -- but given how publicly miffed I've been with Fox lately, over their handling of the last few films, I figure it's only fair to acknowledge that they're actually doing something better this time around.) Anyway. Wow. Bizarre.

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I gleaned from the Jeffrey Wells post that Fox is still limiting riff raff like myself to the night-before-opening screening, but they've scheduled earlier screenings for "legit" (i.e., certain print) critics.

You made the cut, Peter.

It's been a tough review month for me. I just learned that the Lindsay Lohan movie I'd been asked to review -- AFTER having "Sunshine" pulled out from under me (not the studio's decision) -- is, not surprisingly, "going out cold," as the PR person told me. No previews for that one.

Edited July 20, 2007 by Christian

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Well, I was supposed to review Shortcut to Happiness and The Last Legion, but then the former film got dumped in five cities (and NY and LA were not among the five cities, let alone any place in Canada), and just yesterday I discovered that the latter film no longer has a release date, thanks to some shuffling at the Weinstein Co.

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As for the studio's strange policies, it looks as though Fox finally has a small uprising on its hands, and is doing its best to contain the bad publicity, or, at the least, bad will generated among certain reviewers.

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Maybe this just reflects my own frazzled state of mind right now, but I can't recall the last time a review made me laugh as hard as this one -- or, more specifically, as hard as the way Jeffrey Wells double-takes the words "horrifyingly poignant".

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I've added a few more links to the ongoing Fox-shoots-itself-in-the-foot saga at my blog, but now, mere minutes ago, comes word that there will be a DAYTIME press screening for this movie in Vancouver ... and it WON'T be on Thursday ... that's right, we Vancouver critics will apparently get at least one full day to process the film before the reviews go online. (I don't want to be more specific, lest that be spilling a secret or something -- it's so hard to tell with Fox these days -- but given how publicly miffed I've been with Fox lately, over their handling of the last few films, I figure it's only fair to acknowledge that they're actually doing something better this time around.) Anyway. Wow. Bizarre.

Time to be miffed again.

I didn't get around to RSVP'ing until today, because it was not until today that I was absolutely sure I had the babysitting covered. (And this week is considerably more complicated than most weeks, due to a "music class" that my twins are enrolled in, an hour's drive from home.)

Then the publicist gets back to me and says, in effect, "Whoops, you have a blog, don't you? We shouldn't have invited you to the Wednesday-morning screening. Fox wants people with blogs to go to the Thursday-night screening only." And after I arranged the babysitting and everything? "Sorry about that, maybe Fox's policy will change by the time their next movie comes out."

Un-fricken-believable. I thought Fox and all those grumpy critics south of the border had buried the hatchet?